As your Excellency reads English perfectly well, my first Request { 348 } is that you would not communicate this Letter, even to a Translator.

I have hitherto avoided, in my single Capacity, giving your Excellency, any Trouble
at all either by Letter or by Conversation. But the present <Crisis> Emergency demands that I should ask the Favour of your Excellency to explain my Sentiments
to you, either by Letter or in Person. If your Excellency will permit a personal Interview,
<ignorant, and unpracticed as I am, in the French Language, I am sure that by my Countenance,
my Gestures and my broken Syllables in French,> I am sure I can make my self understood by your Excellency. If you prefer a Correspondence
in Writing, I will lay open my Heart in Writing, under my Hand.

It is the Address to the People in America under the Name of Mr. Silas Deane, that
has occasioned this Boldness, in me....2 It is to me, the most astonishing Measure, the most unexpected and unforeseen Event,
that has ever happened, from the Year 1761, from which Year I have been as really
engaged in this Controversy with G[reat] B[ritain] as I am now, to this Moment.

I hope your Excellency will not conclude from thence that I despair of <my> the Commonwealth. Far otherwise.—I perfectly know, that the Body of the People in
the United States stand immoveable as Mount Atlas, against Great Britain.—The only
Consequences of <these> an Address like this of Mr. Deanes <will> may be <a Prolongation of the War, and the necessity of hanging perhaps><bringing to the last Punishment a few><half a Dozen Tories the more. This last, I assure your Excellency is with me and still
more with my Country men a great Evil. We wish to avoid it. But when I consider the
honourable Testimonies of Confidence, which Mr. Deane carried with him to America—when
I consider the Friendship which I have heard there was in France between Mr. Deane
and the Plenipotentiary, and the Consul of France,3><I confess I am afraid that,><even><the Honourable Testimonies from Your Excellency, and even, I dread to say it, from
his Majesty><I hope—I sincerely hope, that the Veneration which is due to the Plenipotentiary and
the Consul of France has not been so employed><have emboldened Mr. Deane to this Measure.—A Measure that must end in his Confusion
and><Ruin><Shame.—I know it will not end in Submission to G.B. which is the greatest American
Evil. But it may End in a Division of the States—for upon my Honour I think that this
Address, itself is an open Contempt, and, as far as in Mr. Deane lies, a total subversion
of our Constitution.—Your Excellency may depend upon this, that no Man knows of this
Letter, but myself—and that no other Man shall know it from me.>

<The Reason, of my presuming, to address myself to your Excellency, separately, is
because, Mr. Franklin has unhappily, attached himself to Mr. Deane, and set himself
against Mr. Lee, and therefore I have communicated this Letter to neither, and I am
determined to communicate it to neither.>

<Dr. Franklin and Mr. Deane were upon better Terms with each other, than Dr. Franklin
and Mr. Lee. I am extreamly sorry for this. But I am fully perswaded, that the Dr.
is in this Instance mistaken and deceived.> much Trouble to Individuals, but no final Detriment to the common Cause. But on the
contrary that it will occasion so thorough an Investigation of several Things, as
will rectify many Abuses.

It is my indispensable Duty, upon this Occasion to inform your Excellency, that Mr.
Lee was, as long ago as 1770, appointed by the General House of Representatives of
the Massachusetts Bay, of which I had then the Honour to be a Member, their Agent
at the Court of London in Case of the Death or Absence of Dr. Franklin. <That from that> This Honourable Testimony was given to Mr. Lee, by an Assembly in which he had no
Relation or Connection, on Account of his avowed and inflexible Attachment to the
American Cause, and the Abilities of which he had given many Proofs in its Defence.
From that Time he held a constant Correspondence with several of those Gentlemen who
stood foremost in the Massachusetts Bay, against the Innovations and illegal Encroachments
of Great Britain. This correspondence I had an Opportunity of seeing, and I assure
your Excellency from my own Knowledge, that it breathed invariably the most inflexible
Attachment, and the most ardent Zeal in the Cause of his Country. From the Month of
Septr. 1774 to November 1777, while I had the Honour to be a Member of Congress, I
had constantly an Opportunity to see his Letters to Congress, to their Committees
and to several of their Individual Members. That through the whole of both these Periods,
he <constantly> communicated the most constant and the most certain Intelligence, which was received
from any Individual, within my Knowledge. And since I have had the Honour to be joined
with him in the Commission, here, I have found in him the same Fidelity and Zeal.

I have not a Reason in the World, to believe or to suspect, that he has ever <written> maintained an improper Correspondence in England, or held any Conference or Negociation
with any Body from England without communicating it to your Excellency and to his
Colleagues.

I am confident therefore, that every Assertion and Insinuation and Suspicion against
him, of Infidelity to the United States or to their Engagements with his Majesty are
false and groundless, <and> that they may easily be made to appear to be so, and that they certainly will be
proved to be so, to the Utter Shame and Confusion of all those who have rashly published
them to the World, <and particularly of Mr. Deane, who has been so forsaken by his Discretion as to have
published to the World many such Insinuations>.

<The two Honourable Brothers of Mr. Lee, who are Members of Congress, I have long and
intimately known. And of my own Knowledge I can say that no Men have discovered more
Zeal, in Support of the Sovereignty of the United States, and in promoting from the
Beginning a Friendship and Alliance with France, and there is nothing of which I am
more firmly perswaded, than that every Insinuation that is thrown out of Mr. R. H.
Lees holding improper Intercourse with a Dr. Berkenhout,4 is a cruel and an infamous Calumny.>5

1. Written in JA's Diary (D/JA/47) beneath a date caption, “1779. Feb. 10,” for a regular journal
entry that was never written. Thus the letter draft may have been written on 10 or
11 Feb. or on both days. It bears no indication of the addressee's name, and three-quarters
of the text is either lined out or crossed out, no doubt by JA himself. Three other versions of the letter are known, all of them dated 11 Feb. 1779: (1) LbC, Adams Papers; (2) RC, Archives Aff. Etr., Paris, Corr. pol., Etats-Unis, vol. 7; (3) Tr, MH: Arthur Lee Papers, enclosed to Lee in a letter from JA written at Lorient, 9 June 1779 (LbC, Adams Papers; JA, Works, 7:95–97). LbC is actually a second draft, replacing the first draft, printed here, which was meant
to be wholly lined out; it is nearly identical in substance with the text finally
sent to Vergennes, and since it is printed in JA's Works (7:79–80) and again in Wharton, ed., Dipt Corr. Amer. Rev. (3:42–44), there is no need to list here the alterations JA made in revising his text. Roughly speaking, JA sent to Vergennes those parts of his letter which were not struck out in the first
draft (that is, those portions which appear in roman type in the present text), and
then added a brief and courteous closing paragraph. A notation at the foot of LbC indicates that the letter was “Sent [to Vergennes] by a Comis, early in the Morning of the 12. Feb. 1779.” The delay had doubtless helped
to shorten the letter by removing some of the indiscretions and asperities of the
first draft.

3. One and the same person, namely C. A. Gérard, who held a commission as consul general
of France as well as minister plenipotentiary to the United States (Gérard, Despatches and Instructions, p. 130, note). Deane's sailing with Gerard in the flagship of the Comte d'Estaing's
squadron had been intended by the French government as a special mark of favor to
the recalled American commissioner (same, p. 89–90).

4. Dr. John Berkenhout, a British secret agent, came to America to promote the aims of
the Carlisle peace commission of 1778. Berkenhout had known Arthur Lee in London and
thus contrived to meet Richard Henry Lee in Philadelphia, but with no further result
than that, thanks to Deane, his relations with the Lees became a warm issue in the
Deane-Lee controversy. See Deane Papers, 3:2–3, 72–73; Howard Peckham, “Dr. Berkenhout's Journal, 1778,” PMHB, 65:79–92 (Jan. 1941).

5. Vergennes' reply to the much curtailed version of this letter that JA finally sent him on 12 Feb., is in the Foreign Secretary's own hand and is { 351 } dated “a Versailles Le 13. fevrier 1779” (RC in Adams Papers, printed in JA's Works, 7:80–81, q.v.). See, further, entry of 12 Feb., below, and note 4 there.